Well Wednesday I had a packed day. Â I had to go pick up Kelli’s dog, get things packed and ready for our trip to Kansas City and work on book rewrites with Kelli. Â It was a full day. Â Then at 8 am I got a call from the carpenter saying he knew I would be leaving and if I could run in a finalized plan for the upstairs layout, he’d appreciate it. Â WHAT???
We didn’t have a finalized lay out. Â Well..I guess I would drop everything and get it figured out. Â Hubby and I had talked about several things. Â We knew a couple things were changing from the original draft but hadn’t hammered out the last details. Â I made a few copies and got to work.
This is the original plan. This doesn’t show our bedroom which is opposite the “Hobby Room”.
We long ago decided to eliminate the closets you see . Â One of the bedrooms already has one and we decided to just put a wardrobe in the other. Â We are using both of these as spare bedrooms and we don’t care about resale. Â Someone else can worry if they want a closet in the bedroom that doesn’t have one when we’re not living there anymore. Â Financially we need to make a few cuts and this is one we can easily make.
From there I noticed that if I would give up the laundry shoot and make the bathroom a little smaller, I could have a bigger closet for the sewing room.
That seemed like an okay idea.
From there I didn’t like that people who wanted to use the bathroom would be coming into the sewing room to get to it. Â Face it…we know I am not a neat and tidy gal. Â The last thing I need to do is parade people through my sewing room. Â It is bad enough that I show pictures of it to all of you..people who understand that quilting can just take over sometimes. Â Other people just don’t get quilting. Â So I tried moving the doorways around.
With that I saw that I could add a linen closet across the hall from the bathroom door. Â I liked that.
This was good in my opinion but still it just didn’t quite click. Â I still kind of wanted laundry shoot. Â Well in the very first set of plans the laundry shoot was supposed to be in a different spot. Â I made a copy of it, cut it out and nope. Â Nothing would work with that idea.
Meanwhile the clock was ticking. Â It was not 11:00 am. Â Hubby would be in for lunch soon we’d need to meet with the carpenters. Â UGH. Â The table was just covered with layouts (yes I did about five more than what I’ve shown so far). Â I sorted good and bad and decided I’d just show them to Hubby when he came in and we’d have to pick what we liked. Â Then as I was picking up the trash papers I saw something from the old design that caught my eye….a bathroom that was suppose to be off the garage. Â It was about the right size….
I cut the bathroom out and slapped it on the paper. Â It kind of fit. Â Oh my…I liked it. Â I liked it a lot. Â My sewing room was now a better shape.
I still had a sewing room..still a closet and more cozy bathroom. Â I really liked it. Â Now I needed to clean the whole thing up before Hubby came in so I could make it all pretty hoping he’d be on board with it too.
But then..in walked Hubby. Â He wanted to know if I was ready to meet the carpenters. Â We had to go now. Â I half panicked. Â I didn’t have time to put what I wanted together nicely in a little “sales package”. Â Well I went for it. Â I started with my first idea removing the closets..then making the bathroom smaller..then the change in the doorways…then the linen closet. Â Then I told him I had just had an idea but didn’t have time to work it all the way through. Â I showed it to him and he loved it.
We grabbed the paper and went to town to meet with the carpenters. Â After a few questions about plumbing and piping we agreed on it. Â I was to go home and firm up the placement of the fixtures.
This is it. Â I love it…Hubby loves it.
In the original drawing we were to have:
Sewing Room 13’3 1/2″ x  21′ 2′
Closet 6′  2″ x  7′ 10″
Bathroom 12′ 8 1/2″ x  6′ 2″
Now instead we’ll have about:
Sewing Room 20′ x  14′
Closet 6′ 2″ x  9′
Bathroom 8′ x  9′
This makes me a happy girl. Â I can’t wait until the walls are up. Â We’re hoping by the end of the week, we’ll have walls on the outside upstairs too. Â Ya-Hoo!!
There was something about moving that bathroom that just clicked with me. Â All along I hadn’t been fond of the original layout. Â I just didn’t know how to fix it. Â Admittedly we may have to pay just a tad more for the plumbing but all in all, I’m okay with that.
Oh that sounds awesome. I was doing something similar we are trying to put a HUGE stove in our kitchen, w/o doing too much destruction/construction. After throwing out a lot of ideas at each other, I drew it out on graph paper. DH measured and I drew it out. we still might tear out 2 cabinets, and move it to the wall, but for now it’s going to go next to the island.
Maybe next yr we will tear out the cabinets.
I’m so happy that things are working out. Great ideas you came up with. And as always, I so admire the many things you do.
I think you picked the best design. To me, you’re ‘entry’ way to your sewing room seems to have a large wall that might be a good place for a pegged wall to hang all your rulers, etc., on!
Good for you – well done !
If you put a pocket door leading into your sewing room and moved it over toward the bath a few inches you could find a piece of furniture and put it opposite the entry to the bathroom and use if for linen storage. Such stress building a house.
question is: are you going to still get your laundry shoot? :)